Resources
End of Life Education
AMSA-VITAS End of Life Education Fellowship Program
Introduces students to end-of-life care issues and develop curricula for their medical schools. With program sites in Ft. Lauderdale, the program combines an orientation to end of life care with weekly seminars and field placements at local hospices, nursing homes and inpatient hospice units.
End-of-Life Projects in a Box, PowerPoint Lunch Lectures & Presentations
Developed by EOL Fellows
Death & Dying Reading List
Physician-Assisted Suicide: For and Against
End-of-Life Care Curriculum Guide
Addresses many important issues in dealing with terminally ill patients, with topics ranging from delivering a terminal diagnosis to addressing spiritual perspectives on end-of-life.
- The Past Life of My Cadaver
- Gross Anatomy
- Medical Students and the Grieving Process: A Personal Perspective
- Spirituality and End-of-Life Care
- How to Deliver a Terminal Diagnosis to Patients: A Helpful Approach
- The Lab
- Turning To The Past To Face The End: Caught in Cultural Limbo
- Advance Directives: Personalizing Your End-of-Life Care Decisions
- He Only Takes the Best: A Diary of Terminal Illness
Project Guides
A 7 Step Plan for Starting a Death and Dying Interest Group at Your School
Playing God: The Dilemma of the Dying Patient (PDF 17KB)
This project takes a controversial case, selected from a local health care facility and utilizes members of the health care team involved in the case as presenters. Suggests methods for audience examination of the issues involved.
A Program to Honor the Cadavers used During Anatomy
A planning guide for students and the cadaver's families as a way to honor the tremendous gift bestowed upon medical students yearly through local donation programs.
Cancer Outreach Relief Effort (CORE)
Matching pediatric patients with medical students
A Dinner Sponsored by Hospice and AMSA
Forming Partnerships with your Local Hospice
Forming a Journal Club at your School
Articles by Dr. Ira Byock:
Author and president of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. Note, AMSA has been permitted to offer these articles but Dr. Byock retains all copyrights of his material. Please cite these references if you use this material.
Consciously Walking the Fine Line: Thoughts on a Hospice Response to Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia
Journal of Palliative Care 9:3 pp 25-28 Autumn 1993
A Letter to The National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine Committee on Care at the End of Life
May 20, 1996, Academy of Hospice Physicians
Notes of a Hospice Physician
The Western Journal of Medicine, Vol 164, No. 4, pp 367-8, April 1996
Patient Refusal of Nutrition and Hydration: Walking the Ever-Finer Line
The American Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care, March/April 1995 pp 8-13
The Nature of Suffering and the Nature of Opportunity at the End of Life
Clinics in Geriatric Medicine, Vol. 12: 2, pp 237-251 May 1996
When suffering persists....
Journal of Palliative Care Vol.10, No.2, pp 8-13, 1994